10th Annual BRICS International Summit in South Africa

10th Annual BRICS International Summit in South Africa

Date: 25-27 July 2018

Participants: India, China, South Africa, Brazil and Russia

Venue: Johannesburg, South Africa

The 10th BRICS Summit was held in South Africa. Heads of state of the five nation-block participated in three days of talks centering around economic challenges facing the world. The summit was spread over three days.

What is BRICS?

The five nation political group of emerging economies of the world is modeled on the G-7 group of nations. Each of these nations have enormous influence in the politics and economy in their respective regions. These nations are also part of the G-20 group of nations. The acronym BRIC was invented the British economist Jim O’Neill in his book Building Better Global Economic BRICs. South Africa was added to the group only in 2010. The group was first formed to improve the global economic condition and reform financial institutions. Its first meeting was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia in 2009. Since then, the group has met every year.

Important Developments buy BRICS:

The BRICS forum was formed in 2011 to pool the economic and political power of the five nations. The next year, the group pledged $75 billion to the International Monetary Fund to increase its spending power. The only condition was the IMF institute voting reforms to be more inclusive. In 2014, the New Development Bank was set up by BRICS as a counter to World Bank and IMF.

The 2019 BRICS summit will be held in Brazil and the 2020 summit will be held in Russia, as part of the round robin hosting format

10th Annual BRICS Summit:

The agenda of the summit was inclusive development. It was attended by Indian PM Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Also in attendance were Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazilian president Michel Temer. Argentinian president Mauricio Macri and Turkish president Recep Erdogan were also guests during the summit.

Some Quick Facts of BRICS:

The 2019 BRICS summit will be held in Brazil and the 2020 summit will be held in Russia, as part of the round robin hosting format.

A global payment system alternative to SWIFT is also in the works called the Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payment Systems(CIPS) since 2015.